31 Players fought by the skin of their teeth through five turns of swiss
and the final top eight.

Among the participants there were many of the best Italian players, like
cicciogire, A_AdeptoTerra, SanPop and SulleyCrusher, plus two very special
guests:

saidin. raken, well known for his results with UW Familiars (this is his
YouTube
channel), and deluxeicoff, famous for many original brews and owner of
the Pauperganda YouTube channel.

Considering that, due to time zone, they played during the night, a
gigantic thank for their participation is absolutely due!

Last but not least, on the Lega Pauper Italia twitch channel you can
find the record of the live streamed during the whole tournament, in which you can
find:

Turn one Faithless Looting, Turn two Exhume into Ulamog’s Crusher by Rakdos Ranimator;

UW Priest deck, created by Entropy, which score the first place in the swiss rounds;

Slivers mirror, an absurd matchup;

Red Deck Wins that win by turn four vs Izzet Faeries.

These and many more highlights can be found in the video!

After the five rounds of swiss, the top contenders are:

Once again, thanks to our sponsors and full entry fees in prizes, the prize pool is absolutely gorgeous!

The winner, after its top 8 placement at the first edition, is Cariddis, well backed by his pointy ears buddies. In addition to the prize cardmarket coupon, he wins a playset of Van Gogh’s Starry Night style artworked Ponder!

Now let’s give a better look to the tournament details and meta share:

As we can notice, around 40% of the players opted for linear aggressive strategies and, in general, almost the 80% of the decks can rely on an aggressive plan. The other 20% of the meta is divided in control and combo decks. Well, to play pauper in these day you have to be prepared to be aggroed, so you can choose to be faster than your opponents or to have adequate answers to their strategies.

Once again the most played deck is Affinity but, despite five players piloting
it, none of them achieved a top finish. The second most played deck is Mono
Black Control, and one of them made it to the top eight. Good number also for
Boros decks (Monarch and Bully variants); the rest of the metagame sees both
other tiers, such as Tron and Izzet Faeries, that niche and less known decks,
such as Cyclestorm, Compass Control and UW Priest. Honorable mentions for
slivers, deck of choice for two players.

For those who like playing something different by the usual tiers, here are some interesting decks which didn’t make to the top 8 but deserve some attentions:

Thanks again to Lega Pauper Italia for organizing the
event, to Raik for the graphics and to the sponsors for the awesome prizes! We
wait for you in June at the third edition of the Italian Pauper Open series!